


The Contest

by beanarie



Series: Failures At Communication [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: College AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-08
Updated: 2011-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames is a secret jailbait genius who was dropped here from the age of chivalry. Arthur is, secretly, enamored. Originally posted in annoying wip-format to ae_match, and then completed, a million months later, at the third round of the fluff meme, hosted by cherrybina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Contest

"We'll settle this like gentlemen," Bickford said.

Arthur blinked. "I left my dueling pistol back home in New Hampshire. Sorry. Didn't know I'd need it."

"Douche-ass." A mostly empty cup of... something flew from Bickford's hand and impacted off of Arthur's chest.

Arthur stood, spilling cards on the floor as he pushed his chair back from the kitchen table with a screech. " _What_ the fuck."

Bickford made a kissy face at Arthur and pointed to Thomerson. Grinning crookedly, Thomerson held out a large bottle of cheap, hard, caramel-colored inbrebriation.

"Different kind of shots, I was thinking," Bickford said, showing off the tiny gap between his two front teeth.

"No," came a voice from the couch. "No, no. No. Fuck that."

"Khan?" Bickford asked, turning and scratching his head. "What's the problem, cockblock?"

"My house," Khan said. "Fucking sixteen year old babies don't die of alcoholic poisoning in my house." Bickford made a derisive noise. "Seriously, cops come after my ass and I will end you like Twilight, Ceej. This is not happening."

"Blow yourself," Arthur said eloquently. He was seventeen. In four months he'd be _eighteen_. Khan was no longer his friend.

"I'm failing to get the reference, Adjai," Eames said mildly from the fully-reclined easy chair. "And, to be frank, it's a little disconcerting that you have co-dependent vampire lovers on the brain to the point where you'll bring them up apropos of absolutely nothing."

The phantom burn of everyone's eyes on him told Arthur that his laugh had been much louder than he’d intended. Possibly he was already kind of, a little bit, silly on licorice-flavored spirits. Midterms had been a bitch. This was the first night he'd avoided cracking a book in so long he couldn't even remember. His level of entitlement for this alcohol was higher than the Rockies.

Eames announced, "I'll do it. I'll be the pinch drinker." He stood up, draining the rest of his cup. A coating of foam mustached his upper lip.

"Beer before liquor, never sicker," Khan mumbled.

Eames pushed at Khan's head with two fingers. "Go find some pictures of Buffy to wank to." He came up to stand beside Arthur at the kitchen table.

"Eames," Arthur said, determined to impart some truth, "You're not actually any ol-"

Eames's apparently just sharpened elbow poked Arthur in the insides. His twelve hundred pound sneaker flattened Arthur's foot. And Arthur threatened to bust out laughing again. It wasn't common knowledge that the only reason Eames was a sophomore and Arthur a freshman was that he had skipped two grades to Arthur's one. He looked twenty-three, had no trouble buying alcohol, and was sometimes mistaken for a TA. Whereas Arthur had acquired the nickname of Doogie Howser--often shortened to the more simplistic "Doog"--upon arriving on campus last Fall and hadn't been able to shake it yet.

No one else knew about Eames but Arthur. (And the admissions office, but whatever.) The realization, and the jager, probably, had Arthur take a tiny, almost imperceptible step sideways until his left arm was warmed by the wide plane of skin left bare by Eames's sleeveless t-shirt.

When Eames said, "I'll be your champion," he leaned his head toward Arthur's as if the others couldn't hear, as if it were only the two of them in the room. The sentiment, the ridiculous gallantry, and the low rumble of Eames's voice melted Arthur's tipsy knees.

Arthur's drunk was an in-between drunk. He'd retained enough presence of mind to know that his answering grin was wide and sloppy and more suited for a six-year-old getting his first glance at his birthday cake, but he couldn't find it in him to care.

After a few seconds ticked by in silence, Eames added, "Little man," and he only laughed at the pathetic, pain-free slap to the shoulder this earned him.

:::

The pair of shot glasses had been filled, downed and clicked on the surface of the kitchen table four times.

Khan had surreptitiously switched the contents of Arthur's cup with straight Pepsi because apparently the tall, wiry guy from Guyana was in the market for a lifelong nemesis. Thankfully Thomerson didn't have Khan's moral fiber, and Arthur's drunk was well on its way to not being in-between any more. Thomerson was okay, Arthur had decided. It was enough to make Arthur go against his boyhood determination not to like anyone named Kirby.

Eames remained perfectly Eames-like, if one ignored how several layers of polish had been sandpapered off of his accent, which Arthur had never thought of as Generic British before tonight, leaving Eames sounding vaguely like something out of a Guy Ritchie movie.

And the fact that he'd been rambling about Janet Jackson for five minutes.

"Of all things to blame for the breakdown of society," Eames said, blowing air through his lips to show his derision. "Let's set the scene. You already have your cheerleaders on both sides, with their bountiful cleavage and their lovely, tiny little skirts that show their pants from sea to shining sea."

"Pants," Bickford repeated, blond hair making haphazard movements as he shook his head, grinning. "How does that even mean underwear? Fuckin' _Brits_. Crap like that convinces me you just like being different. I swear, it's like... hipster nation. Or something. Trendy limey shits."

Bickford had this thing about not letting people forget how much of a prick he was.

Eames raised a patronizing eyebrow. "Our culture does pre-date yours, you know."

Bickford only shrugged, and they knocked back shot number five.

"And then," Eames continued, "We've got the half-time show. The 'entertainment' in the stricter sense of the word. The male partner so boyishly alluring he posed no threat to the red-blooded amongst the viewing, those who genuinely had tuned in for the sport, the Rams clobbering the Ravens or Panthers or Siberian bloody Huskies or what have you.” Everyone started to laugh, but Eames didn’t falter in his mission. He had a point to make about this, and by God he was going to get to it. At some point. And maybe it would even include a shred of coherence. “The pairing of performers had been such that it generated no sexual heat whatsoever. When he grabbed her, it was like the neighbor kid she used to babysit for trying to cop a feel and-"

Every cell in Arthur's body went rigid as a bronze statue. Eames had chosen to reenact the event and his hand--his very warm, very _Eames_ hand--was covering Arthur's left pectoral.

“Bad touch!” Thomerson crowed.

His eyes widening, Eames coughed, letting go within an instant. He turned away from Arthur to down shot number six with a grimace and an awkward laugh.

Arthur’s face, he knew, was probably bright red, edging toward “lobster”. He swallowed whatever was in his cup and stalked off in search of the bathroom amid a largely indecipherable fog of lewd speculation and laughter.

His rule about Kirbys was very much back in effect.

:::

The pizza arrived between shots eleven and twelve, at which point Khan leapt for the door, Bickford leapt for the bathroom, and Thomerson leapt for the television to check the basketball score.

Happy social commentator Eames was no more. His stubbled chin rested on the table, making him look from some angles like a glum, disembodied head.

"What's," Arthur asked. "What's up? What's... wrong? Eh, guy?" He frowned so hard his eyebrows met in the middle. Those had not been his words, all juvenile and monosyllabic and needlessly repetitive. It was like someone was using him as a ventriloquist dummy.

The oblong bowling ball that was Eames’s head went askew as he tilted it for a better view of Arthur. "You still here?"

"Well, you know. Duh." Duh? Arthur's stomach roiled with consternation. That was it; his drinking was done for tonight. "The hell, man?"

Eames enlisted the help of his arms to prop his head up on the table. "I don't even know, to be honest. One of those... stages of drunkenness, I guess. Mm. Melancholy, yeah?"

"Eames, that's like, the opposite of honest. What the fuck." The thought occurred to him that he had shown very little appreciation for Eames's efforts thus far. "You know. You been. You been my good champion. Um. Thank you." He considered adding a comment against Bickford's parentage, but his train of thought got lost before it reached the station.

The smile that broke out on Eames's face was like sunshine. "You're so pissed. Christ, Arthur without his words."

"Yeah." Arthur grinned. "Where'd they go? Fuckheads. Buggering flighty assfaces."

"I _like_ your words."

"Huh?" The phantom ventriloquist had to be using Eames now. There was no other explanation for it.

"I like-"

Arthur meant to lean over just slightly, but his head had gained about fifty pounds. His lips nearly brushed against Eames’s elbow and Eames sort of sighed.

"I wish," Eames said, and Arthur pulled his lips inside his mouth to prevent saying something that might keep the sentence from being finished. "I wish I could get the smell of your aftershave out of my nose." He should have sounded peevish, like _Arthur, you're rank. Easy on the Old Spice from now on._. Instead it came out like something else entirely. Something strange and wistful. Longing.

"Eames," Arthur whispered.

Suddenly two large, flat cardboard boxes dropped from the sky, making both boys jump. " _Dinner_ , asshats," Khan said. "We'll deal with which of you owe me money tomorrow when I'll be cranky and hungover and less likely to let you off the hook in exchange for the phone number of the redhead from the swim team."

Eames spread his hands. "She gave me the wrong digits, Adjai. Not my fault."

It was as if nothing had just happened. Arthur reminded himself that, really, nothing had.

"What ho, Cedric!" shouted Bickford. As he entered the kitchen, he wiped his hands on the front of his jeans because there were no towels in Khan's bathroom. "Let’s get this going again."

Eames rolled his eyes. "A man named after _letters of the alphabet_ is having a go at me."

Bickford made his way back to his chair, his elbow hitting Arthur with a glancing blow as he sat. "Dude. Put your alcohol where your fucking mouth is. Lit-ter-ra-lly."

Barely registering Bickford’s violation of his personal space, Arthur felt his eyebrows touch again. He had no idea what was going on. And a part of him, a very vocal part of him, said it wasn't only the fault of whatever Thomerson had been slipping into his cup all night.

:::

After shot number... oh who fucking cared Arthur had stopped trusting his ability to keep track ages and ages and moons ago, Bickford stumbled outside for a piss (because the stairs had been too much to deal with) and didn't come back.

Slowly it dawned on Arthur what that meant, and he dug his fingers into the meat of Eames's shoulder, holding his breath. Unconsciously, he started to shake him, heedless of Eames's plaintive mumbles.

Words drifted inside from whoever had gone to find Bickford. "He's done," the Good Samaritan called. "I'm taking him to his dorm so I don't have to take care of him in the morning."

Arthur jumped up, pointing emphatically toward the door. "Yeah, yeah. _Fuck_ yeah. Fuck you, Bickford. I win."

Behind him, Arthur heard the slight commotion of Eames lurching to his feet. "Arthur." Okay. Okay, so _they_ won.

Arthur grinned and slapped a sloppy hand over Eames's hair, making his head bob slightly back and forth. "Eames, you are fucking beautiful."

At those words, Eames's face lit up, and for the first time since they met he looked like who he was, a seventeen year old kid with a... crush. Hm.

Did it count as a crush if the feeling was mutual?

Eames nodded, happily, just freaking shining, and sure, part of it was winning, and a _lot_ of it was the booze, but the rest of it, the rest of it was what mattered.

"I mean that," Arthur said.

And then Eames made a heaving, retching noise and dropped to his haunches. Arthur patted his back awkwardly while he did the technicolor yawn all over Khan's floor. Whatever. It wasn't like Arthur hadn't been expecting that.


End file.
